The next day, or rather that same day, for it was then four in the morning, I started with my company for Boston. Mr. Abbey, my impresario, had arranged for me to have a delightful “car,” but it was nothing like the wonderful Pullman car that I was to have from Philadelphia for continuing my tour. I was very much pleased with this one, nevertheless. In the middle of it there was a real bed, large and comfortable, on a brass bedstead. Then there were an arm-chair, a pretty dressing-table, a basket tied up with ribbons for my dog, and flowers everywhere, but flowers without an overpowering perfume. In the car adjoining mine were my own servants, who were also very comfortable. I went to bed feeling thoroughly satisfied, and woke up at Boston.
A large crowd was assembled at the station. There were reporters and curious men and women—a public decidedly more interested than friendly, not badly intentioned, but by no means enthusiastic. Public opinion in New York had been greatly occupied with me during the past month. I had been so much criticised and glorified. Calumnies of all kinds, stupid and disgusting, foolish and odious, had been circulated about me. Some people blamed and others admired the disdain with which I had treated these turpitudes, but every one knew that I had won in the end and that I had triumphed over all and everything. Boston knew, too, that clergymen had preached from their pulpits saying that I had been sent by the Old World to corrupt the New World, that my art was an inspiration from hell, &c. &c. Every one knew all this, but the public wanted to see for itself. Boston belongs especially to the women. Tradition says that it was a woman who first set foot in Boston. Women form the majority there. They are puritanical with intelligence, and independent with a certain grace. I passed between the two lines formed by this strange, courteous, and cold crowd, and just as I was about to get into my carriage a lady advanced towards me and said, “Welcome to Boston, Madame!”
“Welcome, Madame!” and she held out a soft little hand to me. (American women generally have charming hands and feet.) Other people now approached and smiled, and I had to shake hands with many of them.
I took a fancy to this city at once, but all the same I was furious for a moment when a reporter sprang on the steps of the carriage just as we were driving away. He was in a greater hurry and more audacious than any of the others, but he was certainly overstepping the limits, and I pushed the impolite fellow back angrily. Jarrett was prepared for this, and saved him by the collar of his coat; otherwise he would have fallen down on the pavement as he deserved.
“At what time will you come and get on the whale to-morrow?” this extraordinary personage asked. I gazed at him in bewilderment. He spoke French perfectly, and repeated his question.
“He’s mad!” I said in a low voice to Jarrett.
“No, Madame; I am not mad, but I should like to know at what time you will come and get on the whale? It would be better perhaps to come this evening, for we are afraid it may die in the night, and it would be a pity for you not to come and pay it a visit while it still has breath.”
He went on talking, and as he talked he half seated himself beside Jarrett, who was still holding him by the collar lest he should fall out of the carriage.
“But, Monsieur,” I exclaimed, “what do you mean? What is all this about a whale?”
“Ah, Madame,” he replied, “it is admirable, enormous. It is in the harbour basin, and there are men employed day and night to break the ice all round it.”
He broke off suddenly, and standing on the carriage step he clutched the driver.
“Stop! Stop!” he called out. “Hi! Hi! Henry, come here! Here’s Madame; here she is!”
The carriage drew up, and without any further ceremony he jumped down and pushed into my landau a little man, square all over, who was wearing a fur cap pulled down over his eyes, and an enormous diamond in his cravat. He was the strangest type of the old-fashioned Yankee. He did not speak a word of French, but he took his seat calmly by Jarrett, whilst the reporter remained half sitting and half hanging on to the vehicle. There had been three of us when we started from the station, and we were five when we reached the Hotel Vendome. There were a great many people awaiting my arrival, and I was quite ashamed of my new companion. He talked in a loud voice, laughed, coughed, spat, addressed every one, and gave every one invitations. All the people seemed to be delighted. A little girl threw her arms round her father’s neck, exclaiming, “Oh yes, papa; do please let us go!”
“Well, but we must ask Madame,” he replied, and he came up to me in the most polite and courteous manner. “Will you kindly allow us to join your party when you go to see the whale to-morrow?” he asked.
“But, Monsieur,” I answered, delighted to have to do with a gentleman once more, “I have no idea what all this means. For the last quarter of an hour this reporter and that extraordinary man have been talking about a whale. They declare authoritatively that I must go and pay it a visit, and I know absolutely nothing about it all. These two gentlemen took my carriage by storm; installed themselves in it without my permission, and, as you see, are giving invitations in my name to people I do not know, asking them to go with me to a place about which I know nothing, for the purpose of paying a visit to a whale which is to be introduced to me, and which is waiting impatiently to die in peace.”
The kindly disposed gentleman signed to his daughter to come with us, and, accompanied by them, and by Jarrett and Madame Guérard, I went up in a lift to the door of my suite of rooms. I found my apartments hung with valuable pictures and full of magnificent statues. I felt rather disturbed in my mind, for among these objects of art were two or three very rare and beautiful things, which I knew must have cost an exorbitant price. I was afraid lest any of them should be stolen, and I spoke of my fear to the proprietor of the hotel.
“Mr. X., to whom the knick-knacks belong,” he answered, “wished you to have them to look at as long as you are here, Mademoiselle; and when I expressed my anxiety about them to him, just as you have done to me, he merely remarked that ‘it was all the same to him.’ As to the pictures, they belong to two wealthy Bostonians.” There was among them a superb Millet, which I should very much have liked to own.
After expressing my gratitude and admiring these treasures, I asked for an explanation of the story of the whale, and Mr. Max Gordon, the father of the little girl, translated for me what the little man in the fur cap had said. It appeared that he owned several fishing-boats, which he sent out cod-fishing for his own benefit. One of these boats had captured an enormous whale, which still had two harpoons in it. The poor creature was thoroughly exhausted with its struggles, and only a few miles distant along the coast, so it had been easy to capture it and bring it in triumph to Henry Smith, the owner of the boats. It was difficult to say by what freak of fancy and by what turn of the imagination this man had arrived at associating in his mind the idea of the whale and my name as a source of wealth. I could not understand it, but the fact remained that he insisted in such a droll way, and so authoritatively and energetically, that the following morning at seven o’clock fifty of us assembled, in spite of the icy cold rain, on the quay.
Mr. Gordon had given orders that his mail coach with four beautiful horses should be in readiness. He drove himself, and his daughter, Jarrett, my sister, Madame Guérard, and another elderly lady, whose name I have forgotten, were with us. Seven other carriages followed. It was all very amusing indeed.
On our arrival at the quay we were received by this comic Henry, shaggy-looking this time from head to foot, and his hands encased in fingerless woollen gloves. Only his eyes and his huge diamond shone out from his furs. I walked along the quay, very much amused and interested. There were a few idlers looking on also, and alas!—three times over alas!—there were reporters.
Henry’s shaggy paw then seized my hand, and he drew me along with him quickly to the steps.
I only just escaped breaking my neck at least a dozen times. He pushed me along, made me stumble down the ten steps of the basin, and I next found myself on the back of the whale. They assured me that it still breathed, but I should not like to affirm that it really did; but the splashing of the water breaking its eddy against the poor creature caused it to oscillate slightly. Then, too, it was covered with glazed frost, and twice I fell down full length on its spine. I laugh about it now, but I was furious then.
Every one around me insisted, however, on my pulling a piece of whalebone from the blade of the poor captured creature, one of those little bones which are used for women’s corsets. I did not like to do this, as I feared to cause it suffering, and I was sorry for the poor thing, as three of us—Henry, the little Gordon girl, and I—had been skating about on its back for the last ten minutes. Finally I decided to do it. I pulled out the little whale bone, and went up the steps again, holding my poor trophy in my hand. I felt nervous and flustered, and every one surrounded me.
I was annoyed with this Henry Smith. I did not want to return to the coach, as I thought I could hide bad temper better in one of the huge, gloomy-looking landaus which followed, but the charming Miss Gordon asked me so sweetly why I would not ride with them that I felt my anger melt away before the child’s smiling face.
“Would you like to drive?” her father asked me, and I accepted with pleasure.
Jarrett immediately proceeded to get down from the coach as quickly as his age and corpulence would allow him.
“If you are going to drive I prefer getting down,” he said, and he took a seat in another carriage. I changed places boldly with Mr. Gordon in order to drive, and we had not gone a hundred yards before I had let the horses make for a chemist’s shop along the quay and got the coach itself up on to the footpath, so that if it had not been for the quickness and energy of Mr. Gordon we should all have been killed. On arriving at the hotel I went to bed, and stayed there until it was time for the theatre in the evening. We played Hernani that night to a full house.
The seats had been sold to the highest bidders, and considerable prices were obtained for them. We gave fifteen performances at Boston, at an average of nineteen thousand francs for each performance. I was sorry to leave that city, as I had spent two charming weeks there, my mind all the time on the alert when holding conversations with the Boston women. They are Puritans from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, but they are indulgent, and there is no bitterness about their Puritanism. What struck me most about the women of Boston was the harmony of their gestures and the softness of their voices. Brought up among the severest and harshest of traditions, the Bostonian race seems to me to be the most refined and the most mysterious of all the American races.
As the women are in the majority in Boston, many of the young girls remain unmarried. All their vital forces which they cannot expend in love and in maternity they employ in fortifying and making supple the beauty of their body by means of exercise and sports, without losing any of their grace. All the reserves of heart are expended in intellectuality. They adore music, the stage, literature, painting, and poetry. They know everything and understand everything, are chaste and reserved, and neither laugh nor talk very loud.
They are as far removed from the Latin race as the North Pole is from the South Pole, but they are interesting, delightful, and captivating.
It was therefore with a rather heavy heart that I left Boston for New Haven, and to my great surprise, on arriving at the hotel there I found Henry Smith the famous whale man.
“Oh, Heavens!” I exclaimed, flinging myself into an arm-chair, “what does this man want now with me?”
I was not left in ignorance very long, for the most infernal noise of brass instruments, drums, trumpets, and, I should think, saucepans, drew me to the window. I saw an immense carriage surrounded by an escort of negroes dressed as minstrels. On this carriage was an abominable, monstrous coloured advertisement representing me standing on the whale, tearing away its blade while it struggled to defend itself.
Some sandwich-men followed with posters on which were written the following words:
Some of the other sandwich-men carried posters with these words:
My face turned more livid than that of a corpse, and my teeth chattered with fury on seeing this.
Henry Smith advanced towards me, and I struck him in my anger, and then rushed away to my room, where I sobbed with vexation, disgust, and utter weariness.
I wanted to start back to Europe at once, but Jarrett showed me my contract. I then wanted to take steps to have this odious exhibition stopped, and in order to calm me I was promised that this should be done, but in reality nothing was done at all.
Two days later I was at Hartford, and the same whale was there. It continued its tour as I continued mine.
They gave it more salt and renewed its ice, and it went on its way, so that I came across it everywhere. I took proceedings about it, but in every State I was obliged to begin all over again, as the law varied in the different States. And every time I arrived at a fresh hotel I found there an immense bouquet awaiting me, with the horrible card of the showman of the whale. I threw his flowers on the ground and trampled on them, and much as I love flowers, I had a horror of these. Jarrett went to see the man and begged him not to send me any more bouquets, but it was all of no use, as it was the man’s way of avenging the box on the ears I had given him. Then too he could not understand my anger. He was making any amount of money, and had even proposed that I should accept a percentage of the receipts. Ah, I would willingly have killed that execrable Smith, for he was poisoning my life. I could see nothing else in all the different cities I visited, and I used to shut my eyes to go from the hotel to the theatre. When I heard the minstrels I used to fly into a rage and turn green with anger. Fortunately I was able to rest when once I reached Montreal, where I was not followed by this show. I should certainly have been ill if it had continued, as I saw nothing but that, I could think of nothing else, and my very dreams were about it. It haunted me; it was an obsession and a perpetual nightmare. When I left Hartford, Jarrett swore to me that Smith would not be at Montreal, as he had been taken suddenly ill. I strongly suspected that Jarrett had found a way of administering to him some violent kind of medicine which had stopped his journeying for the time. I felt sure of this, as the ferocious gentleman laughed so heartily en route, but anyhow I was infinitely grateful to him for ridding me of the man for the present.